Celebrating 5 Years of Million Dollar Journey!

Yes, you read right, it’s already been five years since Million Dollar Journey kicked off! It all started in early Dec 2006, just over three years after graduating from University and in the process of turning around our personal finance situation towards building wealth.

It still baffles me how much this site has grown over the years. It all started with a personal online journal to track my finance journey which evolved into the community you see today. A strong and loyal readership who is as passionate about personal finance and investing as I am. Proudly, we have grown to over 16,000 subscribers and have received over 10 million hits over the past five years.

As a token of my appreciation, I’d like to again give something back to the readers and the community (about $1000!).

The Giveaways

Gift Cards

For the readers, I’m offering multiple prizes to increase the chances of winning. Having said that, we’re giving away $25 Amazon.ca or Amazon.com gift cards, 20 to be exact ($500 total). Hopefully this will go towards financial books that you’ve been meaning to pick up.

Charity

In addition to the prizes, I’d like to do something for the Kids Make a Wish Foundation this year. This is a first for us – MDJ will donate $1 for every incremental facebook “Like” on the MDJ facebook page by contest closing date.

Simply click the “Like” button at the top of the MDJ facebook page and we’ll donate $1 for every “Like” greater than the today’s 405 (up to a maximum $500 donation).

How to Enter:

To be eligible for the prizes above:

1. New and Existing Money Tips Newsletter Subscribers will be given an entry (you can subscribe here). (+1 entry)

What is the Money Tips Newsletter?

The Money Tips Newsletter is a free email newsletter that I will send out once or twice a month.

The content includes highlighted articles on Million Dollar Journey, exclusive offers for Million Dollar Journey readers, and original content that doesn’t make it to the front page of this blog. Thus far, I have 10 scheduled Newsletters editions that all subscribers will see. The topics range from the basics of investing, the Smith Manoeuvre, to the top credit cards in Canada.

As mentioned above, your privacy is important to us. We will never sell your information to third parties, as well, you can unsubscribe from the newsletter at any time.

The reason I’m asking this is because I’m looking to grow the content on this site and I’d like to hear about the favorite money topics of those who matter most – the readers. Some common topics include, personal money stories, debt reduction, investing strategies, tax tips, money saving ideas, credit card comparisons, retirement or whatever else you can think of.

About the author: FT is the founder and editor of Million Dollar Journey (est. 2006). Through various financial strategies outlined on this site, he grew his net worth from $200,000 in 2006 to $1,000,000 by 2014. You can read more about him here.

I’d love to see some content for high net worth individuals that roll their investments into a corporation. I realize this might not be needed by most readers (nor I at the moment) but since this is the Million Dollar Journey…

I have several colleagues at work who do this, and they and their spouse each own a share. They occasionally pay themselves a special dividend when they want some cash for non-investing purposes.

I’d love to know more about the costs, benefits, etc. for this technique. My colleagues seem to think once your investment portfolio is north of $1 Million it’s time to use this strategy.

I’d like to have a stock invenstment for dummies. Step by step from opening an acount to transfering money and making investments in individual stocks.
also some links to do this with fake money first.

I would also like to echo the comment above talking about personal finances and net worth when combined with a corporation. How to optimize removing money from the business, how to invest the money still in corporate accounts, etc.

Congrats on your anniversary. I joined your website because of the Smith Maneouver articles. I really enjoy the personal finance stories and the information on basic investment/ money saving strategies such as TFSA, RRSP, RESP. I am moving into a mature life cycle of my portfolio (15yrs to retirement) and would like some strategies on equity preservation! With the current economic times my portfolio is taking a beating all around. I do have a financial consultant, but always looking for new approaches!

My favourite articles are about saving money: tax minimization, reducing fees, finding good deals, using the best credit cards (no surprise there), and other frugal ideas.

A lot of people seem to be voting for investment strategies, and while I find these articles educational (especially Clark’s work), they are of lesser interest to me as I’m just going to stick with my boring old couch potato strategy.

I actually started reading this site 3 years ago when I found it by searching for info about the Smith Manoeuvre, and the existing articles are great! I’m not sure a whole lot more could be written on this topic, but continue keeping them up to date!

Thanks for keeping this great site going and growing, and congratulations on your success! I look forward to contributing more articles in the future.

Congratulations! Enjoy reading the posts especially on the Financial Updates for comparison purposes..let’s me know if I’m on track for my own MDJ. Would love to hear more things teaching kids about money. I have a young daughter and would welcome some ideas.

Congrats! My favorite topics have always been about your Smith Manouvre and the explanation of financial topics (like the recent share buybacks) because you’re great at explaining things in a simple way.

Congratulations on five great years!
I am commenting, I have subscribed, and I liked the facebook page
I’d love to see more about increasing income via several streams.
My email address is nicole at knitnicoleknit dot com

I started reading because your topics were relevant to me (my family) and were written in a simple and appicable way. I spent the first couple months scouring your archived entries and found many tidbits that have improved my decision-making abilities when it comes to financial decisions.
I continue to expand my knowledge in managing my own protfolio of investments. Self directed products are much more accessible now and a majority of people don’t even consider this an option. Please continue to write about the Smith manouevre and your choices for self directed investing.
I see you divested your revenue property. Many people find these investment options less risky than the stock market (especially with the way the markets are these days) so I would like to see more investing information related to the property market.
I am always a fan of the financial makeover, where you take a person’s situation and get advice. I’m always torn between investing in RESPs, TSFAs and RRSPs, and paying off debt. So every story that weighs these decisions helps with my understanding of my own situation.

Congrats! I like money-saving tips that go beyond the obvious ones like packing a lunch and making your own coffee. I also like comparisons of credit cards, insurance products, etc. (which are really money-saving tips, as well).

This was one of the main sites that helped me pick a discount broker and take control over my own investments. The posts reviewing the discount brokerages directly influenced my decision.

I would like to see more posts relating to “due dilligence” type topics when it comes to choosing stocks. From my reading, most sources recommend doing it, but never give detailed clear instructions on how to do so.

A case study detailing why “X” stock had big red flags 1 year ago or something like that I would find very useful.

Five years is unbelievable. Great job MDJ. To consistently produce the high-level content that you have over the years is pretty amazing. I’m a huge fan of the quality of posts on the SM here. In terms of what I would like to see more of, I wouldn’t mind seeing some posts about your blogging journey and what your rise was like.

Your blog continues to be one of my favourite, for content and one I look up to!

You also inspired me to start my own site!

I’ve always enjoyed your SM articles. I enjoy reading how leverage can be used successfully to reach financial goals. I also enjoy reading your articles about new financial products, whether it be credit cards, mortgages or financial accounts. You can’t invest what you can’t save.

Keep up the great work and I look forward to interacting with you for many more years!

I was curious to see what others here were most interested in, so I quickly counted up some common mentions. If people mentioned multiple topics, I included them all, so there’s been 161 votes so far (by my rough count), even though only 123 people have commented so far and not all of them mentioned a favourite topic.

It seems that about 35% of votes were investment related. Most were just general things like “investment strategies”, but about a fifth of them were specifically interested in dividend investing (7.5% of total votes). Registered investments (RRSP, RESP, TFSA) were also mentioned frequently and make up 6.2% of the total votes.

Next most popular are articles related to saving money, with 29%. On this topic, almost a third mentioned the credit card comparisons, making it the #1 specific topic (8.7% of total votes). Tax tips and budgeting/planning were also somewhat popular in this category.

13% of the votes were for either FT’s personal updates (such as monthly Net Worth posts), or for personal stories from other readers, 6.8% and 6.2% respectively.

8.1% of total votes were for Smith Manoeuvre articles, an impressive number that may prompt FT to try and find something new to write about on this topic.

Other specifics deserving mention are Real Estate (3.7%), Retirement (3.1%), and Small Business (2.5%).

Finally, a statistic that I find particular interesting is that only 1 person mentioned “finance books”. This is surprising given how many people try to win the book give-aways.

Congrats on 5 years!
Would love to see some analysis of early retirement strategies and what the pros and cons of potential systems of asset liquidation that can occur: how best to liquidate RRSPs, before/after 65, etc.

Would love to see series on a comparison on fictional portfolio (retirement or otherwise) and how it fares invested in different investment vehicles. Could be tracked monthly for a year or ongoing if it is proves interesting.

Could incorporate rebalancing and perhaps monthly contributionsetc, things that we should do for our own investment portfolios.

excellent source for financial information. highly recommend to those who seek solid foundation to build their financial future. I like all the topics here especially stock investing and money saving ideas. I am considering selling my FAZ for BCE after reading your articles..

I’d like to find out more about building a house on your own vs. buying a house from the builder. As I’m currently thinking to buy a lot and build my dream house on it…. :D Also if possible can touch upon modular homes….

Congratulations. When I come to your site i enjoy reading a variey of articles but mainly money saving tips and how others build their wealth. What do they do to get attain their goals. Keep up the great work!

Congratulations on 5 Years! I have been a diligent reader for almost a year now and can honestly say; there is nothing else out there like this! Many have started and failed/given up, but MDJ keeps growing! It’s great! Keep up the great work! I would love to read more about fresh frugal living ideas, a lot of searches are always generating the same ideas! As well, I enjoy reading about great passive income or side income ideas! Thank you for all the great reads thus far!

Congratulations on making it to 5 years! I tend to like articles on things like the Smith Manoeuvre as well as generalized investing discussions (like some of Ed Rempel’s articles), though I like your Net Worth updates as well as they’ve inspired me to start tracking my own.

I like reading personal finance stories (rags to riches kind of stuff), and since I invest mainly in GIC’s and HISA’s (I know, I know, not what most people here are into) I like to hear about where the best rates are, etc. GIC ladders, etc.

Time just flies, doesn’t it? I like personal stories/case studies, comparisons (i.e. invest in TFSA or RRSP?, things like that), practical how tos for financial products (you’ve decided you want to invest in some Tim Hortons stock, now how do you go about buying the stock?), explanations of financial terms, all sorts of things… while I’m interested in stocks and investing, I really like a personal spin on those topics, otherwise they tend to get really dry.